Trip gone south
by Anime-Goth-Girl-13
Summary: Sheppard decides it's enough with all the bickering on his ship. He takes the entire crew on a 'trip to gain trust in eachother.' madness ensues, especialy when the trip takes a turn for the worse. set in mass effect 2
1. Introduction

**Introduction:**

Commander Sheppard was enjoying a nice meal, beef this time, made by the Normandy's cook.

Or at least he was trying to enjoy it, which was a difficult task when you live on the SR2

Normandy.

Conflict was to be expected when you put more than 7 races on the same fleet, a Cerberus fleet even, though Sheppard didn't like that statement.

But you could hardly call this conflict anymore.  
All Sheppard wanted was a peace full diner, have some small talk, reflect on missions on a less serious note.

Most of the time though, he had found himself sitting in his private quarters, only being able to have a chat with himself, which on it's turn led to EDI questioning his sanity.

Men would think it was a bit drastic of him, it could hardly be THAT bad.

...Men were wrong.

Jack and Miranda were by far the worst. Always finding one thing or another to bicker about.  
Legion and Tali got their share covered as well. They were more understandable, But still not desirable.

Garrus still seemed to suffer from that 'stick up his ass', being not that talkative.

The same goes for Thane, Jacob and Kasumi.  
Sheppard sat in between Mordin and Zaeed though... No further explanation needed.

The point was, Sheppard was fed up with it.

The idea had come from Kelly, who was right on top of the problem as well.

It was part of her job after all...

She had told Sheppard of one of here psychology books, which had noted that good teamwork could only be achieved trough deep trust and respect.

Surely his team didn't lack that right?

Right...

A bounding was needed.

On their next trip to the citadel, Sheppard had remembered the words of the Turian salesperson.

A hunting trip to a far away deserted planet to strengthen the trust.

Sheppard surely wouldn't mind the vacation.

Now all that needed to be done was convince the illusive man...

'Well that was easy.' Sheppard noted when stepping out of the communication link.

The illusive man hadn't been hard to convince.

Both The Reapers and The Collecters had been extremely quiet lately and weren't likely to act up anytime soon, probably plotting something new.

It turned out even the illusive man knew of the problem, informed by Miranda obviously.

And that's how this whole mess started...

**A/N: lame intro chap is lame -.-' it gets better, don't worry**


	2. Rules, Sheppard?

**Chapter 2: Rules, Sheppard?  
**

Sheppard had to over think it for a long time, but in the end he had to admit it was for the best.

Both EDI and Kelly had advised him to make a set of rules to be followed at all time, starting their arrival on the remote planet.  
At first Sheppard had deemed it unnecessary, until he asked the crew to pack their stuff.

"Are you kidding me?" Sheppard stared in shock.

At leasts 20 packs were standing, completely blocking the cockpit of the Normandy, the only way of getting trough was climbing over them.

"This is mad!" He stated again.

Joker looked over in a confused way to find out what the fuss was about, his face dropping at the sight.

"What now if I need to take a piss." He sighed defeated.

Just then Mordin came over, dragging with him a new trunk to be added to the pile.

Sheppard walked up to him, a demanding look on his face.

"What's this all about." he said, gesturing towards the still growing assembly.

"We packed our stuff. Much to take with us. Not yet finished." Mordin nodded, undisturbed he continued to drag the case along.

"This... This is not what I meant..." Sheppard pinched the bridge of his nose.

Right about then, Miranda came walking up, oblivious about the whole ordeal.  
She spotted the irritation on his face, put up her nicest smile and went up to him.

"What's wrong commander?" She said innocently, not fooling Sheppard though.

"What's wrong? This is!" Again Sheppard pointed to the pile of suitcases, which seemed to look more and more like some foreign construction back on earth, the Eiffel Tower he believed it was called.

"That's our packings." Miranda stated the obvious.

She said it like she was trying to explain something very simple to a little child.

By chance, the other squadmembers entered the hallway, all carrying small objects or the likes.

"When was the last time you went on a vacation?"

Sheppard asked, not directing the question to anyone in particular.

"Vacations, Sheppard?" Tali retorted.

The commander realized that what he just asked, might as well be the stupidest comment ever.

"All right," He sighed "This is not how it works. You can't take all this stuff, you only take what you need the most. Like this..." He implied, holding up his own traveling bag.

The others however still seemed a bit confused.  
"I do not feel the need to take anything with me, Sheppard Commander." Legion stated.

"I didn't pack that much." Grunt snorted, pointing shortly to a small pouch beside his feet.

Also Garrus was holding up some grey sack that barely contained anything, while raising his brow.

"Then who's all this stuff from?"

Almost everybody glanced in the direction of the girls, looking skeptical.

"Hey, don't look at me, I'm not into that cheerleader stuff'" Jack spat, raising her hands in defense.

Silence lasted for a bit, when finally Kasumi had the gut to speak out.

"It's not because we're on a remote planet hunting animals we have to look like them!"

She half-heartedly tried to save herself, but Sheppard was aready shaking his head.

"No spare clothes, no make-up, no anything that smells like flowers." He determined.

"I hate flowers." Jack said under her breath on the background.

Then Commander Sheppard turned his attention to the Salarian, standing only 5 feet away from him.  
"Mordin... Lose that." He said, meaning the countless bags with research equipment.

"Such loss... remote planet... exotic Fauna and Flora, likely not to be recorded before... Much to learn..." He mumbled, but did as he was asked.

"Just clear the way ASAP and try again. If that doesn't work out, I'll pack your stuff." Sheppard threaded.  
"...And hurry." Joker added from behind him, wobbling in his chair a bit. "Now I really need to take a leak."

The small run in seemed to do his work anyhow, as when the squad members returned the amount of luggage had decreased drastically.

Sheppard was pleased.

They were sitting around the table when Sheppard confronted another issue.

"Now..., just like with the baggage, I'm forced to develop some rules..."

Mumbled complaints came from almost everyone.

This was going to be fun.

**No disappearing, no "going out on your own" or anything like that.**

**Food and water we bring is limited, so be careful with it and don't use it needlessly.**

**Things will have to be done around the camp, everybody does their share in things like: looking for water and food, making fires, holding guard and stuff.**

**Tents are shared per 2, we try to switch often enough... This for the sake of everyone.**

**Bathing will happen in groups, though boy's and girls separate of course.**

**EVERYONE and then I mean EVERYONE is going to participate and do their best... if I notice you don't... I'm still thinking of something but it will be good.**

**If you need to relieve yourself, you can of course go alone, but please go at least a mile away from the camp.**

**Sheppard is first in command, together with the Turian from the travel agency, Miranda is second in command.**

**This isn't a relaxation vacation. No communicating with other planets, no more then 10 minutes to prep each morning and so on.**

**NO luxery products!**

The squad members could only stare, dumbstruck with Sheppards sudden interval.

"Well that's... harsh." Garrus decided.

"Are you sure this is necessary, commander."

"I am." Sheppard said, he knew what would happen if he hadn't.

Chaos... total chaos.

"I will be there the whole time, but if the unexpected were to happen, the rules still count, understood."  
Sheppard wanted to make sure everybody got it.

This was a matter which he had to press on... Or at least it was according to Kelly.

'I just hope I'm not going to regret this.' he though.

In the cockpit, Sheppard had just informed Joker of the plan.

The ship had to keep near, but far enough from the planet.

Also from this side, communication had to be kept to a minimum, except in a case of emergency.

Joker seemed a bit angry though, so Sheppard questioned him.

"Why can't I come?" he asked, crossing arms in a childlike manner.

"Mister Monroe, S'drassa is no fit place for someone with vrolic syndrom." EDI stated, with the cold tones common for AI, but Sheppard knew she cared as well.

"I'm doing better." he mumbled, and this was true.

Chakwas had been working on an improved medicine, enabling Joker to walk a bit farther every so much time, but it still was nothing to rejoy over.  
"Look, I know you feel a bit neglected as crew member, but we don't know what we'll encounter down their. It's not that your not one of us... we just can't." Sheppard excused.

"You'll have to get over it." He concluded.

Then he walked away, there was much to be done before they arrived.  
Joker smirked.

"You do not mind anymore." EDI distinguished.

"Nope." He answered. "I just got a nice idea."

"I do not like this..."

" yeah, Yeah, whatever, where's the mute button again?


	3. Arrival meets problems already

**Arrival meets problems... already.**

2 minutes, that's how long the crew had already spent on the deserted planet, and it were 2 minutes to much for most of them.

It seemed only Sheppard was still positive about this plan, making the others wonder how long that would last.

Most of them had their money on 3 days tops... turned out they were overestimating their commanders conciliatory greatly.

Once arrived, the whole saying goodbye took a bit longer then he had considered.

Also, Sheppard noticed Joker disappeared somewhere in the whole ordeal, figuring he was just angry that he couldn't join, Sheppard decided not to press it.  
A mistake he would regret.

Once the Normandy had disappeared in the distance, leaving over a dozen aliens on a deserted planet at the edge of the universe, the misfortune started.  
Though it wasn't really needed, Sheppard did a 'headcount' ,if you could put it like that.

'14' he mumbled thoughful.

It took a moment to realize, but once it sank in, Sheppard knew this couldn't be correct.

They had a stowaway.

"Hi Commander." Joker said, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

Seeing the sudden eye twitch Sheppard developed, it was not working.  
"What..How...When?" He stumbled, pointing to the spot Joker was standing.

"I just left the ship after we landed." He stated, like there wasn't a problem with that.

"It's what you get for wanting to count me out."

"This is ridiculous, I explained to you we didn't 'count you out'. Who the hell is flying the ship anyway?' Sheppard looked like he was about to have a hysterical fit.

Or maybe he was already having one.

"EDI, of course, she can do it perfectly on her own." Joker shrugged carelessly.

"She knows? How did you ever got her to comply to this crazy idea?"

"Ken from downstairs helped me. We made sure EDI thought it was your idea and didn't question my absence." he smirked.

Sheppard made a silent vow to kill the engineer when this trip was over.

"This is not going to work! We'll call the Normandy immediately! Garrus, the radio?"

He demanded, only to be met by silence.

"Radio? Uhm... what radio are we exactly talking about?" he hesitated, scratching the back of his head awkwardly.

"Please tell me you didn't forget the radio?" Sheppard pleaded, though it was against better judgment.

This was going downhill fast.

"This is horrible." Kasumi voiced everyone thoughts.

"Don't panic!" Sheppard hushed. "We are going to go trough with this, radio or not. If not contacted, EDI will assume everything is alright and return in 3 weeks, we'll hold out."

"What if something happens?" Tali asked with a concerned tone.  
"Nothing will happen." Sheppard reassured, laying a hand on her shoulder.  
She nodded, but it was evident she didn't believe him completely.

Sheppard wasn't even sure he did himself.

After walking for some hours, the mood had lightened a bit.

Relieved, Sheppard wondered if this would work out after all.

That was when disaster number 2 struck.

The turian of the travel agency had spoken with Sheppard earlier, discussing were and when to meet, but once arrived, the open place seemed as deserted as any other.

This was bad news.

Maybe he was just late or something.

Either way, Sheppard decided it was for the best to start preparing already.

They had landed pretty late in the afternoon, so the sun was already setting.

There were only so many hours of daytime left, setting up camp was the reasonable thing to do.

To Sheppards surprise, Joker hadn't slowed them down as much as he had anticipated, wobbling behind them at average speed.  
Now he was sitting on the ground pretty worn down, lucky they were with so many.

Dispatching the tasks went smoothly and it didn't take long before Sheppard had the whole camp up and running.

Pleased with the work he went over to Joker and sat down beside him.

"You ok?"

"I'm fine," He smiled up at his commander. "It's fun to be out of that cabin for once, the only walks I ever took were those to the pot. Or in the safe environment of the citadel, as the doctor likes to call them." he looked a bit annoyed with the though.

"I hope your not doing this to prove anything to her, or to me for that matter?"

"Don't worry commander. Maybe i'm just proving it to myself."

Sheppard smiled, Joker would pull trough.

If he himself would was a whole other story.

The tents were upright, a small fire was burning and it was decided who would sleep were. What was Sheppard missing then.

Scanning his crew for a moment, he frowned.

"Uh..Guys. Where's Mordin?"

The others looked around them, seemingly they hadn't even noticed the Salarian was missing up to that point.

Sheppard almost face palmed.

"I think I saw him with some weird research equipment a while back." Jacob casually pointed out.

Sheppard did facepalm.

"Remember the rules?" he asked without wanting an answer, still he got one.

"Yes, Sheppard Commander, saved a copy of them for future reference." Legion said proudly.

"Ugh, come with me Jacob, we'll get him."

Meanwhile, Mordin was a small distance from the camp away, gleeing over some weird flower he found, that only grew in local climate.

He knew Sheppard had asked not to, but he just had to know!

With a small syringe, he carefully injected something into the bud, watching with a glisten in his eyes how the flower turned from a bright pink in a more dull grey color, and died.

So, fauna doesn't withstand Ribonucleic Acid, noted.

"Mordin." a demanding voice came from behind, Sheppard stood cross-armed.

"Stop killing flowers, please."

"But only started experiment on local Fauna, far from finished commander."

Sheppard threw Mordin his best death eye, but it didn't have any effect on the Salarian.

"If you hold the experiments, I'll allow the last day to do nothing but it."

He negotiated as he knew there was little else he could do.

Except maybe get Jacob to try to drag Mordin back to camp.

Wait, that would actually be funny. He had to keep that in mind for next time.

Back at camp, Sheppard noticed it was suspiciously quiet.

Wasn't it the goal of this 'vacation' to get his crew memebers talking to eachother more.

Why weren't they? ... except if they were too busy doing something else.

When he saw Jack coming out of the Miranda/Kasumi tent, his doubtfulness reached a peak.

He made his way to there steadily, determined something fishy was going on and he was going to trash the party.

Upon reaching destination however, Jack blocked his way, giving him one of her usual wicked smiles.

"Back already Commander." she stated rather loudly, followed by a bunch of fidgeting noises from inside the tent.

Sheppard was not fooled by this parade however.

"Move aside, Jack." He demanded.

"Sure, Sheppard." she said innocently, while moving to the side swiftly.

Sheppard pulled at the tent opening harshly, only to find Kasumi and Miranda smiling at him like they hadn't just been doing anything against the rules.

"I'm watching, I know your up to something... I just have to find out what."

"Us... how could you even think that Commander." Miranda faked indignantly.

This only caused Sheppard to role his eyes at them, before leaving peevishly.

The 2 girls just smiled, holding something behind their backs.

Their decoy had worked.

As night started to fall, with still no sight of the Turian they were supposed to meet, Sheppard was in no mood for small talk.

He encouraged everyone to go to bed early, saying that the real work hadn't even started yet.

While lying his head down tiredly, welcoming the sudden rush of fatigue, he though he was up for some rest.

Hopefully this would be a peaceful night...

"We're born to fight! Even your silly genophage couln't keep us down.!"

Who's idea had it been to make a Grunt/Mordin tent?

**A/N: thanks to those who have read this far. Please leave a review, I hope to improve.  
I'm also curious as to how well I did some of the characters?  
and last but not least, any suggestions of things that may happen, what team mates may have taken with them secretly and so on are loved greatly. I have lots of insporations myself as well, but I love to hear your ideas.  
**


	4. A new morning, a new problem

**A new morning, a new problem?**

Morning came swiftly. A bit too swiftly to the likes of commander Shepard, who discovered Zaeed had a big snoring problem.  
Not to let his mood be disturbed, he woke everyone up, meeting with mixed responses, ranging from a "yes, Shepard-Commander" from Legion to a "How fucking early are you planning to wake us." from Jack.  
Eventually he managed to get them all lined up anyway, even though they looked like they had just spent a long night at Aria's nightclub.  
'Good enough...' Shepard concluded. 'They would get used to it...hopefully.'

"As an act of compliance, the girl can bathe first. The small lake we found yesterday is fauna free, you get half an hour while we prep breakfast.'  
Half an hour was longer then the rules stated, but maybe it would help them to cheer up.  
Shepard didn't feel like leading a grumpy team all over the forest in search of some random Turian who still hadn't appeared for god's sake…

"Alright than, what kind of food did we bring?" he asked cheerfully, still determined to make the best of the situation, not one of his specialties.  
Holding a mediocre sized sack up, Garrus stated: "This is what we brought for breakfast material."

It contained all the more normal breakfast food he enjoyed, eggs, milk and cereal, it of course also had alien altered foods in them, but Shepard didn't bother with them.  
Surprised he pulled out a large chunk of raw meat, about the size of an Omni-tool.  
"The hell…?"  
"Ah, yeah, that's mine." Grunt bluntly stated and took the meat back.  
"Okay…. Let's start a fire. Who wants to try first?"  
"Coming through!" Zaeed barged, running up to them with a flamethrower.  
Luckily for everyone who had eyebrows (and wanted to keep them) Jacob caught him by his arm before he could start a forest fire.

"If we find chemicals with high burnable factor, maybe we can start fire. Should look for various plants that display…"  
While Mordin rattled on in the background, it would take too long to do something so elaborate anyway, Sheppard looked over the remaining crew.  
He knew very well which one of them were able to start a fire, but he was stuck on wanting to let the others try for themselves as well.

"Legion, why don't you give it a shot?" He asked, handing the Geth a small pack of Lucifer's he had all this time, but the others had plain ignored it.  
"I'll do my best, Shepard-commander." The robot stated, taking the items.  
Wondrous enough, the Geth succeeded in a single try.  
'"How did you do that? There wasn't even any timber…" Shepard asked suspiciously to the robot who was standing there with the burning torch.  
"Simple, Shepard-Commander. Just Viewed 356.523 extranet pages on how to make fire…. Also may want to know that in the yesterday rugby match, Krogan team won with 20-0 against Turian team."  
"Oh yeah!" Joker loudly exclaimed shortly before Garrus dropped his head. "You own me 2000 credits." The pilot said to the disappointed Turian.

In the main time, Shepard had extinguished the fire, scolding Legion for his forbidden use of the extranet.  
"Why don't you try, Grunt?" Shepard helpfully provided.  
"Don't do it, Shepard!" Garrus intervened quickly.  
"Unlike Wrex, this Krogan is an actual danger if you give him those tools." He went on, obviously not putting much fate in his teammate.  
Grunt merely snorted back. "Typical for some Turian without backbone…"  
Mordin at this point felt the need to point out that Turians have exoskeletons.  
Without heading mind to either of them, Grunt snatched the matches from his commander, who was wondering how come there weren't more casualties on his ship when his crew obviously felt so heated towards each other.  
Meanwhile Grunt did his best to replicate Legion's one shot wonder.  
Some moments later everybody was pleased to be sitting around a nice small fire.  
Too bad they had first spent 10 minutes controlling Grunts little Forrest fire.  
By the time they had successfully cooked some of the food, (read: let Shepard prepare the meal while listening to Garrus' countless "told you so" statements.) the girls arrived back at the camp.  
They all looked suspiciously clean and prepped, but Shepard decided not to push.  
Somehow he felt he may be a little less convincing with only half his eyebrows.

After filling themselves with the food, Shepard and the other males made their way to the pond as well.  
Washing themselves was awkward with so many different species and not even possible to get into words.  
needless to say, it consisted of a lot of scrubbing the ash from their previous hot encounter and Legion standing by the side commenting how you should not forget to wash behind your ears.  
After all this was survived however, came the fun part. Or at least in Shepard's opinion.  
Hunting.

The Turian may have not been there to lead the group, but Sheppard felt confident enough to do this himself.  
He looked over his lined up team thoughtfully.  
giving them spears could turn out to be a very bad idea.  
Still he handed one to each of the members, who stared at it reluctantly.

"Can't we just use our guns?" Zaeed asked, clearly disappointed by the lack of action going on.  
"No, this is how we are going to do this! See it as broadening your horizon. It's how they used to do this before intergalactic space travel."  
"Correction commander, this is how humans did it before THEY invented intergalactic space travel."  
Sheppard send an angry look at Thane, who just shrugged.  
Why couldn't he just be the leader of a normal, human-only ship.  
"Let's make this a bit more interesting, shall we. How about a little competition. The one who brings back the most meat, will get to sleep alone for 3 nights, meaning there will be a tent of 3. And the winner can also decide who is in that tent."  
Sheppard couldn't help smiling. He was an excellent hunter. This would be fun.  
"Joker, you'll stay here, keep the score and make sure nobody cheats."  
The pilot crossed his arms and looked truly pissed, but Sheppard ignored it.  
he had some teammates to beat.


End file.
